I think we all agree that democracy has its flaws (my personal outrage at the deciding issue in the last Australian Federal elections made me question the ignorance of the masses. Stupid stupid stupid!). But what is the better alternative? A benevolent dictatorship? This seems to me to be a nice alternative, but how do you guarantee the benevolence, and what is benevolence anyway?
even if it had not been for fatal differencies between people a competition for limited resources goes on… equally as we can see surges on free market we can see surges in power… there is constant fight between people… we can not escape it at all… anything anytime is decided on fight or power if you will… first there must be a power and then could be democracy or dictatorship… democracy or dictatorship are organized types of power more or less stabilized but i think that there can be stability between people even if their power is not organized neigther democraticaly nor autocraticaly… take for example the world as a whole… it has many entities of organized power called states but these entities are not organized in any kind of metastate… these states figth for resources like persons do… why are any states (people under organized power)necessary?.. silly question is’nt it?..
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of American and to the republic for which it stands…”
Well, I mean, ehhh, therefore, it says… 
notorious reply on questioning democracy goes: is there anything better?.. it comes from unreasonable deliberate exchaning technical and powerful societies for idea of democracy itself… if the most powerful and developed societies were islamic i can imagine the same people saying: is there anything better?..
First of all, Islamic is not the opposite of democratic. Turkey is both.
But, your main point is a kind of a duh. The fact that the most powerful and developed societies are democratic is indeed evidence that democracy has worked better than other systems. Societal development wasn’t simply handed out randomly by God.
ok, christianity has worked better then other systems… majority of democratic societies were christian and based on white race… such kinds of arguments should be reviewed, rethinked…
The question is too ill-defined, IMO, to be really productive. Athenian democracy would be unrecognizable to us today, although it was a democracy. IIRC, in Athens judges were chosen by lot. The city was broken into ten “tribes” who each had control over what came on the agenda for about one month a year. Of the members of the tribe, a smaller group was selected, again by lot IIRC, and they were actually the ones who would make the agenda decision. So for every public meeting where business was done, the agenda was set by something like thirty people and then the citizens would argue and vote. (I don’t know how the meetings were run in regards to who could obtain the floor and so on.)
The strength of democracy doesn’t lie in its alleged positive attributes, but in its negative ones; i.e. democracy is a good way to minimize certain abuses of power. But majority rule per se ain’t so great either. It does benefit probabilistically in that if each person has a 50.01% chance of being right on an issue, then the more voters you have the better the chance of a correct vote. But it does also mean that the minority has no rights! The Constitution of the U.S. isn’t democratic–but all the rights any American (or resident alien) has are directly attributable to that text. Majority rule doesn’t mean shit when it is up against a constitutional principle, and you can thank your god for that.
Nor is democracy necessarily a good way to appoint every official in government. Consider an example: Can you seriously look at the way Congress handles the budget and conclude that we would be better off if the money supply was in the hands of frequently re-elected individuals? For that matter, would you seriously want the person interpreting the document delineating your rights to be in a near constant bid for re-election? If you do, I would like to hear that position defended.
Whoever said that democracy was the worst system of government, except for all the others had his head up his ass. For my money I would want a constitutional republic. It allows the polity to benefit from the regular enemas that popular election affords, yet it works to balance that against dangers of fashion and whim.
Of course, in this day and age “constitutional republic” is what most people seem to mean when they say “democracy”. So in that sense, democracy is a good thing. But in the pure sense you have a situation of no minority rights with every decision maker trying to satisify the latest fad among the populace. I don’t see how that can be a good thing.
Forceps,
Four quick reasons against democracy:
1.) Informed Decisions (as mentioned above) – The people are stupid which means before any vote, there must be a lengthy debate in the hopes that the truths will become evident and the masses will become educated. The problem here is that the people ‘educating’ the public are doing so for their own purpose. IMHO this problem is only getting worse with examples like human cloning or economics in which the issue is too complex for experts to understand, let alone John Q Public.
2.) Efficiency – Democracy is brutally slow such that a referendum requires sufficient time be granted to the debate. Then a few separate days have to be allowed for people to vote (those that are out of country, military service, etc). Then it can take several days to count the ballots (or recount if necessary). Not exactly effective in dealing with an impending crises (floor relief example above). Made even worse as the country grows.
3.) Cost – referendums are expensive. Vancouver’s recent Olympics referendum cost between $500,000 - $700,000. Not exactly feasible for each and every issue. The 1995 Provincial election in Manitoba, Canada, cost nearly $3.3million [http://www.elections.mb.ca/elect99/qa/qa33.htm]. The cost of the 1997 federal election in Canada was $200.6 million (combined cost of the enumeration and election) [http://www.elections.ca/]
4.) Turn over – many situations require long term solutions (amortization over 10 years for example) which are either ignored by a president with an 8 year term limit, or repealed by the next guy looking to make his mark. I used the case of elected officials, but the general public also gets finicky. Again, IMHO the general public wants quick fixes, and rarely has the staying power to make long term decisions (i.e. jobs in the steal industry now vs a cleaner environment later).
People are short sighted and laced with emotional appeal. Most of us are too busy trying to survive & thrive in our own individual lives to know everything about international & domestic politics.
Democracy places the burden of decision making on people who are generally short sighted (do you see anyone voting for a tax increase?) and laced with emotional propaganda.
I guess an example of emotional propaganda would be one of many examples from the book ‘the culture of fear’. Americans are afraid of child kidnapping by strangers, even though it rarely occurs. That is one of many examples where the mainstream perspective on an issue has nothing to do with its reality. When ignorant, short sighted, emotion laden people start running everything then the system will start to crumble.
To go along with aegypt’s theme, Winston Churchill also said democracy is “the worst kind of government there is, except for all the others.”
“Two cheers for democracy!”
“Not three, two is already more than enough.”
Can’t remeber who said that.
I can give you a very good argument against democracy: Effective long term measures arent necessarily popular. People tend to fall for shiny things rather than intelligent plans.
For instance, in my country (3.500.000 people), 400.000 people work for the state in different capacities. Unfortunately, due to some reallt dumb old law, public workers cant be fired. That means that, even though about half of those guys are completely useless, the government has no choice but to keep paying them!
Eventually, the public workers caught on on this fact, and now we have plenty of guys who punch their cards in, sit for eight hours, then punch them out.
Why doesnt anyone do anything about it, you ask? Suppose the president decided to kick 200.000 guys out. Assuming that each one had at least 1 adult relative, thats 400.000 votes! No one in his right mind would commit that kind of political suicide!
Thats the kind of stuff that makes me wonder whether democracy is a viable form of government: Announce you are implementing a complex economic reform, and half the people will just blink at you while the other half picks up the protest banners; announce a suicidal tax cut, everyone will cheer…
this isn’t mine, it’s a quote, but i forgot who said it:
“what’s democracy’s strength, is also its weakness”
what was meant was the freedom of speach everyone enjoys in a democracy.
you know the good old saying:
opinions are like a**holes, everybody’s got one.
It cause diversity, sure, it also cause spite and grief and war
You might enjoy this piece by Machiavelli. “THE MULTITUDE IS WISER AND MORE CONSTANT THAN A PRINCE”
various forces in the world are so huge that in order to defend ourselves we need company of the others who share the same danger… organized power no matter on which idea it is based upon is a danger for me for us… i want to defend myself but not by inventing ideology… it is simple i want to survive and i want certain type of people who are like me or better by my standards to survive… to build some kind of force does not mean necessarily power…
My biggest beef is that it is rule by the majority - and I just do not like people ruling each other. Worst case scenarios: All the people with <insert feature here> now being culled by the majority.
Usual case: Elections seem to consist highly of people voting themselves larger and larger chunks of other peoples money. In that way I think it encourages an entitlement mentality.
Not that I can think of anything better mind you…
there are many who question democracy with mere sense of curiosity… there is a wide gap between those who are just curious and who are serious about it… arguments against democracy are so simple and clear it is fairly difficult to explain it… but i now from my own experience what is it like to be a “democrat” and what is it like to be just curious questioning it later… i matured alot…
It seems to me that the best possible form of government would be absolute monarchy under a truly enlightened dictator. Such a leader could evaluate the people’s wants and needs and make decisions quickly and effectively, with everyone benefitting. However, not too many of these people exist. Maybe none do. A bad monarch can be really, really bad, as history has proven repeatedly. The advantage of a democracy is that we don’t have to worry about replacing the leaders with similarly enlightened ones. A democracy might not be as responsive or effective as the ideal dictator, but we don’t have to find its successor, as it is fairly self-perpetuating. Also, a bad democracy will not be as bad as a bad monarchy. In the end, I think democracy is probably the most practical government, but it is not the ideal.
the question is if any government is necessary for me… for the others maybe… i am trying to find a way to be out of reach of any government… everybody strives for that in the end but for now me and all of you support one type of government to escape another…
i support wolves to scare out bears… but wolves are dangerous for me too but less then bears…